In order to bring down Sony's servers the hackers used a Distributed Denial of Service attack which involves bombarding the victim's servers with so much traffic that they overload and have to shut down.

It's not yet clear who is behind the attacks however one Twitter account claimed responsibility on behalf of ISIL saying, "Kuffar [non-believers] don't get to play videogames until bombing of the ISIL stops."

The BBC points out that this could be a diversionary tactic as the same account had previously tweeted: "Sony, yet another large company, but they aren't spending the waves of cash they obtain on their customers' PSN service. End the greed."

To make matters worse another account with ties to the online activism group Anonymous has also taken responsibility for the attack saying that it was to highlight Sony's need to up its security.